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He stilled for a second.
Not even breathing.
One second.
Two seconds.
Whoosh!
With a quick punch of his free hand against the handle, he sent the blade through skin, cartilage, and bone. He twisted the knife for good measure before pulling it free, but it didn’t matter—the fucker was already dead.
Oh well.
He would have spent more time with the mark, but he was running a teensy bit behind schedule. Completing two hits in one night was his thing, but tonight, he’d taken three jobs and the sun was rising in just under two hours.
Three jobs was pushing it, Solomon had earlier warned him. Not that he listened to his boss much anymore.
Wiping his blade on the man’s shirt, he slipped it inside the sheath strapped to his thigh and walked out of the bathroom. He cut a right and stayed close to the brick wall before making his way into the blackness of the brush-covered hillside that ran behind the building.
The hiss of a semi-truck’s brakes came from the parking lot. If the trucker had arrived five minutes earlier, Echo would have been found. Doing the hit in a public place had been risky, he knew that, but it certainly would never stop him.
He was tired of feeling nothing.
Wasn’t it a good thing he had discovered how to get a bigger thrill? So what if he’d raised the stakes and now killed with the thought of being caught? Doing jobs in public places had turned out to be downright exhilarating…
He never got caught.
He was too sneaky.
When the truck’s door slammed in the distance, Echo kept walking.
He didn’t look back.
Reaching the industrial plant at the end of the block, he leaped onto a nearby scaffold. He balanced on the lower railing for a second before climbing several feet upward. From there, he jumped across the distance to a metal ledge that surrounded a burnished tower.
Hand over hand, using his feet and body, he advanced higher and higher up the tower. Reaching the highest point, he leaped and balanced on the narrow railing that surrounded the top.
Crouching, he studied the terrain below.
His gaze snagged on the figure of a man.
It was the same guy he’d sliced in the bathroom at the bar last October.
Coincidence?
He didn’t believe in them. That was Solomon’s teachings—everyone and everything was suspect.
Echo squinted at the distant figure. He’d only cut the fucker, when he could have easily sliced open the blue-eyed, blond-haired man’s throat.
When he’d told Solomon that he’d let someone live, his boss had not been amused. And Echo figured he’d made a smart move by telling Solomon over the phone instead of in person. His boss had bitched about him not cleaning up the scene.
The figure glanced up, but Echo wasn’t worried. There was no way in hell the man could see him and he doubted the guy could climb that high. Even if he did, Echo had ways of escaping that the guy below probably never dreamed of.
He was a master at the art of escape.
Mid-August 2023
Ice never in a million years thought he’d see Echo again—much less have the man walk into a secret meeting at Creed’s house one warm California evening.
